Good morning there,

Nothing says 'Andreessen has arrived' like a 30-minute queue to get into their London office launch party.

Last night 250 or so founders, lawyers, academics, investors, consultants and journalists braved a wait in the rain to make it into the NoMad hotel in Covent Garden (the breakfast in the atrium is lovely when it's not 7pm and November, we hear) to welcome America's best-known VC to Europe.

British government officials were there too, patting themselves on the back and scoffing fancy tacos, while angels drank whisky sours with a16z embossed ice cubes and asked whether Andreessen is, indeed, in talks with Mistral. Sifted can confirm: yes they are.

— Amy Lewin, editor

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🦊 Wefox’s longstanding CFO steps down. Amid record high losses (€32m in 2022), the Berlin-based insurtech unicorn has reshuffled its management team to steer the company towards profitability. 

• After nine years, cofounder Fabian Wesemann is handing over the CFO job to US industry veteran Jonathan Wismer. 
• Wesemann will take over wefox’s M&A business as chief investment officer (CIO).
• CEO Julian Teicke expects wefox to be in the black by latest 2025. 

🏦 Atom bank raises £100m — and shaves almost as much off its valuation. 

• The UK challenger bank has raised from existing investors BBVA, Toscafund and Infinity Investment Partners.
• Its valuation is now £362m, a source close to the matter told the FT. That's £73m less than the £435m it attracted at its last funding round in February 2022. Sifted has separately confirmed the new valuation.
• Although Atom was the first neobank to launch in the UK back in 2013, it’s struggled to grow at the same pace as competitors. Its customers are in the hundreds of thousands, rather than millions, like competitors Monzo, Starling and Revolut.
• Atom said it would funnel the fresh capital into its balance sheet as it looks to grow its mortgages and small business lending activities. 
  

🎎 Who pulls the strings at Trade Republic? Sifted has mapped out the 14 executives who hold the power at the notoriously discreet German fintech, which has raised $1.2bn from VC heavyweights Sequoia, Accel, Project A, Creandum and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. 

👑 How much is getting invested outside the UK's London-Cambridge-Oxford "Golden Triangle"? Startups in those three cities raised $55.8bn from VCs — three times the amount picked up across the rest of the country combined.

💊 Novo Nordisk, Europe's biggest company and the maker of diabetes drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, is piling $1-2bn per year into biotech. And it has plenty of it: the company has seen its stock soar by 210% in the last three years and is now valued at $430bn. 

🧑 Is a chief revenue officer the next key hire for European startups? Getting deals done is more difficult now than it has been for a while and making sure that startups have people who "know how to sell in tough times" is crucial. So, do you need a CRO? 

"I've just been made redundant, now what?"

In a new monthly column, Sequoia's talent director Zoe Hewitt is answering career questions from Sifted readers including — today — how to deal with the experience of losing a job. 

"Don’t rely on a CV to tell your story. Rather, aim to build a crisp, compelling elevator pitch on who you are and what you do best," Zoe writes.

"And don’t be disheartened by rejection. I often say that finding a job can be a full-time job in itself. As crushing as it feels at the time, every ‘no’ moves you closer to the next right opportunity." 

You can read Zoe's column here.

Wondering how you can progress in your role? Curious about how you might pivot into a new function? Thinking about starting a company? Send your questions to askzoe@sifted.eu and we’ll select one to publish anonymously with Zoe's response next month.

It's official, we've all gone mad for AI. Collins Dictionary has revealed that AI is its "word of the year" for 2023, beating "debanking" and "Ulez".

While previous words of the year have lived to become semantic mainstays, including lockdown (2020), fake news (2017) and Brexit (2016), others have not lived up to the hype. Take 2021's NFTs, for example.   

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• Vespa, an AI startup spun out of Yahoo last month, has raised $32m in Series A from London-based Blossom Capital.
• A recent Sifted Pitch finalist, Kuva Space has bagged €16.6m in Series A funding to launch its micro-satellite constellation, aiming to observe the molecular composition of any material on Earth. The funding round was led by existing investors Voima Ventures and Nordic Foodtech VC, with Singapore-based Earth VC.
• London's Superhog, a risk management platform for property managers, has raised a £5.5m Series A. Participants in the round included 6 Degrees Capital, Hambro Perks and Solano Partners.
• Hamburg-based software provider Graylog has netted $39m ($9m in equity, $30m in debt). New investor Silver Lake Waterman and existing investors Piper Sandler Merchant Banking and Harbert Growth Partners led the funding. 
• Madrid-based HRtech Shakers has secured a €6m seed from investors including Adevinta Ventures, the investment arm of classifieds site Adevinta, along with Brighteye Ventures, Athos Capital, Wayra, Clave Capital and CDTI Innvierte.
• French startup WIND my ROOF has raised €2m in a round that includes GROUP IDEC INVEST, business angel Antoine Fuentes, EIT InnoEnergy and VINCI Energies.

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